Reproba Vexillum

Sometimes I hate being right.

Obama's campaign was a historical and ground-breaking achievement, even beyond the obvious accolade of becoming the first elected black (well, half) president. Voter turnout was unprecedented, as well as funds donated by individuals for the campaign. Inspired by a campaign of hope and a slogan of "change", voters turned in a landslide victory for Obama and left neo-cons cringing.

But the neo-cons are singing a different tune, now that Obama has announced his cabinet selections. Karl Rove calls them "reassuring". Right-wing commentator Max Boot, who supports the use of "America Might to promote American ideals", stated, "I am gobsmacked by these appointments, most of which could just as easily have come from a President McCain." In conservative magazine The Weekly Standard Michael Goldfarb reviewed Obama’s appointments and declared that he sees “nothing that represents a drastic change in how Washington does business. The expectation is that Obama is set to continue the course set by Bush in his second term."

The radical shift in opinion by Conservatives is mirrored on the Left; the liberals sense of hope and desire for change has been replaced by dismay. Not a single one of Obama's top members of his national security and foreign policy team was against the war in Iraq. None of them are against any other conflicts the US is currently embroiled in either. Expect more of the same as these hawks take over, promoting the same policy of military intervention that's been strung along since George Sr. was in office. War with Iran is practically guaranteed.
Obama's economic team is just as bad. His economic plan is merely stop-gap for an upcoming depression, unless he makes big changes fast.

The troubling thing is that this dismay over Obama's cabinet stops at a certain level. It's hard to look at that sort of picture when nearly 2 million jobs have been lost in the last year, and yours could be next. When unemployment is at 6.7 percent, unless you count those people who dropped out of the workforce altogether, in which case it's 8.7 percent. Unless you count those people who can only find work at part-time jobs which don't make enough to live on, in which case it's almost 13 percent.
That can be pretty strong blinders.

Of course, we're also the people who trample a store employee to death at Wal-mart druing a stampede to get the best deals on the shelves during Black Friday. So how much do we care about politics anyway?